SHULMAN@sdr.slb.COM (Jeffrey Shulman) (10/14/87)
Date: Sun 13 Sep 87 17:01:25-GMT From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR> Subject: Delphi Mac Digest V3 #43 To: Delphi-List: ; Message-ID: <558547286.0.SHULMAN@SDR> Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(218)+TOPSLIB(129)@SDR> ReSent-date: Wed 14 Oct 87 13:36:30-EDT ReSent-from: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR> ReSent-to: post-info-mac@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Delphi Mac Digest Sunday, September 13, 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 43 Today's Topics: Brain Dominance (4 messages) Scoop RE: A C formatter (2 messages) MAC SE FAN NOISE (2 messages) TurboMax Upgrade miniWRITER info -- pass it on HyperCard External Commands Need help with CDEF (3 messages) RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (2 messages) Mac Assembler RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (2 messages) long ADT cords ? print (3 messages) Re: Re:PYRO screen blanker Suitcase and Finder 5.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: MACENGLISH Subject: Brain Dominance Date: 6-SEP-15:38: Mousing Around The following is neither Hyper, nor wild, nor stacked. And it has nothing to do with cards. Aww shucks, they say. I mean, really, we could not possibly talk about anything else. Have any of you read the article that appeared (that "that" was for you, Bob) in Mouse Droppings entitled "The Apple Macintosh right brain computer." (That's right, Bob, no caps on those words.) I have been wondering for some time why the Mac appeals so much to me, but computers in general don't. I wondered if it had anything to do with my being left-handed or being right-brain oriented (I'm not sure about the latter.) He says, "Because the nerves connect the left side of the body to the right side of the brain (and not vice versa), that means that right-handed people tend to have logical and analytical thinking dominant while left-handed people are more artistic and creative." Well, I question the accuracy of his information. I attended a workshop given by Gabriel Rico, who has done lots of research on how the brain functions. She said that the idea that left-handed people are necessarily right-brain dominant and that right-handed people are left-brain dominant is not true. I also read a book about left-handed people and the author discussed the differences in left-handed people who are left- brain dominant and those who are right-brain dominant, and those who have mixed brain dominance. However, Tom's Pittman's argument seems to be that the Mac is a right-brained tool and that the changes that have been made to it recently have been made by left-brained people (e.g. the keypad is no longer moveable so that left-handed people can put it on the left side, cursor control keys are on the right end of the keyboard). "Lefties put the mouse on the left, so to shift-click you reach for the shift key with your right hand and leave the delicate mouse control to the left. The right shift key on the Plus is tiny and buried in among a bunch of other keys the same size so it is hard to find. But on the original Mac it was big and sitting on a corner of the keyboard. You see, on the Plus they eliminated the option key on the right entirely, so you have to reach across the keyboard to the left-hand side. Definitely not a keyboard for left-handed people. If you don't have one of those stodgy left-brained Plus keyboards, you might try an experiment. Even if you are right-handed." He suggests trying to use the mouse with the left hand. You are supposed to like it better. His conclusions? 1. "The Mac is a wholistic, visual (meaning artistic), right brained tool.... Business people are stodgy, analytic, left-brained. They didn't like the Mac. Apple is now run by stodgy business people, so they changed the Mac just ever so slightly." 2. He implied that women would like it better because the two half of their brains communicate more than do men, especially right-handed men. I think the Mac may be a right-brain oriented machine. But I think he's confused brain dominance with right-and left-handedness. I'm wondering if the changes made to the Mac reflect the fact that most people are right-handed and they don't consider left-handed people, rather than the fact that they are necessarily left-brain dominant. Also I am left-handed, but I put my keypad and trackball on the right side of the keyboard. It feels very awkward on the left-side. It feels similar to trying to write with my right hand. I'm not ambidextrous, so I don't know what to make of that. Okay, guys, if I haven't muddled this too much, what do you think? Debbie ------------------------------ From: PEABO Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22230) Date: 6-SEP-21:49: Mousing Around I think having a left-handed keyboard is a much better idea than having two keyboards with different numbers of function keys, but it has been my experience that keyboards are just about the most poorly designed, ill-thought out components of a typical computer, and that this failing is largely systematic throughout the computer industry. That is, not being able to buy a left-handed keyboard is the very least of the sins perpetrated upon us by keyboard designers! (Other things wrong with keyboards include not enough keys in most portables, the infamous and extremely awkward profile of the original Mac keyboards that forces you to bend your wrists at an impossible angle while "resting", the placement of the control or alt keus in different and often awkward places on various keyboards, weird ideas of where the < and > keys should go, and to some extent just having to poke around a bit for the second class citizens of the ASCII character set.) I too am somewhat skeptical of the simplistic statement that Macs are for right-brained people ... peter ------------------------------ From: ROWLAND Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22230) Date: 7-SEP-10:23: Mousing Around Debbie: I'm not an expert on the subject, but I have worked in the field a little and been taught by experts - the neurophysiology on which the right/left brain view is based (Sperry to start with) has been grossly overpopularized. There are fascinating subjects to be explored but they likely have little to do with such loaded adjectives as "wholistic, visual, artistic" - obviously good qualities - and "stodgy, business, analytic" - usually bad qualities. Books like "Drawing on the right side of the brain" (a book teaching art and drawing) contain a very good viewpoint and teach very well : if that needs a label then perhaps "right-sided" is OK, but don't take that as having anything to do with what's connected right or left side in the brain. Most of the experiments have been done on people whose corpus coll. (where the wires cross) has been severed for other medical purposes (epilepsy usually). That means they already have an abnormal brain, so its a little dangerous to draw general conclusions. Other studies have been done with PET on normal subjects, but there are a lot of steps between brainmetabolism of glucose and how the brain works. As far as motor connections for the left and right side and their relation to handedness: the connections cross over regardless of handedness (the explanation I've seen is that if you are advancing on an opponent - animal type- and he takes a swipe at your head and gets it, its good if the controls for the part of your defenses facing him weren't affected. That's a typical evolutionary argument - I doubt it, but it sounds at least as plausible as explaining why the mac "works" with similar explanations). Perhaps dominance of the "wholistic" means one or the other of the motor connections would show up, but it sounds pretty far fetched to me. One or the other eye can be dominant in a way similar to handedness; yet it is the right (or left) side of EACH eye that goes to the right or left side of the brain. Clearly there it cannot be a dominance of one or the other hemisphere affecting the eye dominance. I didn't mean to be so long-winded, but I think its counterproductive to look for explanations that are needed (what's good about the mac) in areas that while fascinating are so removed from the likely level needed. How a lisp or PASCAL program works certainly depends on whether you have a 68020 or a 80386 "brain" in your box, but if you are trying to figure why it doesn't a program doesn't work and you are looking at the connections of the transistors in your processor chip, well ... Mike Burns ------------------------------ From: DDUNHAM Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22236) Date: 7-SEP-22:53: Mousing Around The new ADB keyboard (and the one for the //gs) suffers from stupid arrow keys -- the Plus had the up arrow above the down arrow (makes sense, right)? The new keyboard has the up arrow to the right of the down arrow. Keyboards always have been a weak point of most computers, as you say -- why DEC dropped the nice Selectric layout of the VT100 (ok, they did make the same arrow mistake as the ADB keyboard) in favor of the so-called European layout (with left-shift and return in the wrong place) for their VT2xx machines... I would hope that the Mac engages _both_ halves of your brain -- that's what I think is the most important (i.e. designing a program takes right brain, implementing it takes left -- people like Bill Atkinson who can do both well I greatly admire). ------------------------------ From: JEFFS Subject: Scoop Date: 6-SEP-16:04: Bugs & Features I received Scoop (the desk-top publishing program from Target Software) on Friday. Today I set out to learn it. Well, let me say that between the bugs in the program and tutorial, MS Word 3.0 looks bug free :-(. I'm going to try it on my Mac II at work on Tuesday and give them a call with my 15+ item bug list. Stay tuned for details... Jeff ------------------------------ From: PLAMONDON Subject: RE: A C formatter (Re: Msg 2037) Date: 6-SEP-22:41: Tools for Developers Senor Soccerking, As to your C formatter, allow me to suggest the following: If at all possible, allow the user to specify the format of the output, by allowing him/her/it to select among a number of formats, or to speifyy a new f mat. I hate to be compelled to use a formatter's one, rigid format. For example, I was recently converted away from standard K&R format to "4+2" format. The differene is that in 4+2 format, all non-brace lines begin on lines indented a multiple of four spaces (via tabs), while all braces are a) on their own lines, and b) are indented an extra to spaces. Thus, the only thing braces line up with is other braces, and all braces line up with their mates. As an example, consider this for loop: K&R: for (init; cond; incr) { statement(s); } 4+2: for (init; cond; incr) { statement(s); } 4+2 formatting adds whitespace, and greatly simplifies the matching of braces. If your formatter enforced K&R formatting, I can guarantee that I wouldn't use it. Although 4+2 formatting is not (yet) widely popular, I expect that its use will spread, so it ought to be included as a formatting option. Thanks for the opportunity to flame on this. PLAMONDON ------------------------------ From: DDUNHAM Subject: RE: A C formatter (Re: Msg 2037) Date: 7-SEP-04:24: Tools for Developers Lew Rollins started a nice formatter, but it looks like he isn't going to be finishing it. It printed all the code in Courier-10 and the comments in TimesBold-12. One nice feature was the ability to include stuff in comments. Frex, /* GET_WORD - Parse a word from input /* Would draw a (hairline) box around the comment. And /*.fo (c)1987 Maitreya Design */ puts a footer on each page. He was also planning to put information in Acta files and parse that (presumably one outline per project, to control global options). I strongly recommend Peter's Prototype Maker if you intend on changing the indentation at all. ------------------------------ From: HVNZ Subject: MAC SE FAN NOISE Date: 7-SEP-19:58: SIG Business I just sold my Mac 512e and purchased a Mac SE 20, turned it on in my VERY QUIET office and was deafened by the fan. I took it back to my dealer and he assured me "the outrageous noise was normal" and he sent me on my way. Later, I found out that this was one of the biggest complaints about the SE. I would appreciate any help on silencing my Mac SE. Thank You John Lipke DELPHI NAME - HVNZ ------------------------------ From: DEDHED Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22249) Date: 7-SEP-20:21: SIG Business I've had the same complaint about the SE fan. I found that by placing a 33 ohm, 1/2 watt resistor in series with the fan, it reduces the noise by one half (subjectively). Right now, I've got a 60 ohm NTC (Negative Temperature Co-efficient) Thermistor, and it seems to be working great. When I used the 33 ohm resistor, I measured an increase in the exhaust temperature of approx. 4 degrees Celsius. The advantage of a thermistor is that as the internal temperature goes up, its resistance goes down, so it tends to be self-regulating for various ambient temperatures. So far, everything seems to be working great. If you decide to do something of this nature, be advised that Apple will most likely consider your warranty voided. Mike ------------------------------ From: BGAARDER Subject: TurboMax Upgrade Date: 7-SEP-21:54: Hardware & Peripherals Does anyone have an opinion on the MacMemory TurboMax upgrade? It sounds like a good thing to get if you are considering the upgrade to 2.5MB with a 4MB in the future, since it means thaat you get the extra speed for $500-600, as well as the faster? SCSI. This would be on a MAC+. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: DDUNHAM Subject: miniWRITER info -- pass it on Date: 9-SEP-01:28: User Supported Software David Gelphman suggested that miniWRITER allow users to choose the creator for the text files it creates. In fact, it does. The 'mWRT' resource configures this (and other options). Use ResEdit to edit the 'mWRT' in the suitcase. This is made easier by the 'TMPL' resource in the original miniWRITER suitcase. Use ResEdit to Copy the TMPL, open ResEdit, and Paste. Once you close ResEdit (and save the changes), it'll know how to edit 'mWRT' resources, and you can set the default font, size, and options. Also, since I got a call today from someone who said miniWRITER didn't print, let me remind everyone that SuperLaserSpool can't handle miniWRITER. The author knows about the problem, and will hopefully fix it. (SLS also won't work on the Mac II, and a new version is supposed to handle that problem.) ------------------------------ From: PEABO Subject: HyperCard External Commands Date: 9-SEP-02:25: Programming Be careful about your stack protocol when developing external commands for HyperCard. If you forget to declare (in C) the external function as a "pascal" function, you will cause HyperCard to restore its registers one longword off on the stack. Unfortunately one of those registers is A5, and you may as well reboot once the crash occurs (exit to shell doesn't manage to recover very gracefully). (You can recognize this mistake easily because HyeprCard crashes with the PC set to zero immediately on return from your function, at least in the case I had trouble with.) peter ------------------------------ From: DANAMAC Subject: Need help with CDEF Date: 9-SEP-03:26: Programming Techniques I am working on a Control DEFinition (CDEF) and have run into a puzzle. The control is to look and act very much like the volume control slider in the Control Panel and is an indicator type of control as opposed to a simple button type. The closest example I have found is the scroll bar - a scroll bar with just a thumb and no paging or arrow parts is almost what I am coding EXCEPT that the CDEF is dragging the indicator rather than letting the Control Manager do the default indicator dragging (dragging a gray outline of the indicator) which is what the scroll bar does. Everything went fine as I was coding and testing the various control operations: drawCntl, testCntl, calcCRgns, etc. UNTIL I implemented dragCntl to perform my own dragging of the indicator. The symptom is this: I have defined a CNTL resource that uses my new CDEF, there is a DLOG that uses this CNTL resource. When I get a mouse event, I call IsDialogEvent which reports that, yep, itUs a dialog event. Then I call DialogSelect (which calls TrackControl, which calls DragControl, which calls my CDEF, which does the dragging). The problem is that when I respond to the dragCntl request in the CDEF and return a non-zero function value to indicate that I have handled the drag, DialogSelect returns FALSE indicating that there was no hit in a control! If I back off and dummy out my dragCntl part of the CDEF and let the Control Manager do the dragging then DialogSelect returns TRUE and the item number of my control - as I am expecting. It appears to me, in NOSYing around in the Control Manager, that when the CDEF returns TRUE after a dragCntl request, TrackControl clears the part code thus returning FALSE indicating that the track failed and so DialogSelect says no hit occurred. However if the CDEF returns FALSE, and lets the Control Manager do the default dragging then TrackControl returns the part code and DialogSelect correctly indicates a hit in that part. Ack! Has anyone delt with this area of CDEFs, specifically doing custom dragging of the indicator in an indicator type of control, and can shed some light for me? Thanks in advance for any help - I hope this message wasn't too long (I know, it was...) ------------------------------ From: SOCCERKING Subject: RE: Need help with CDEF (Re: Msg 2049) Date: 9-SEP-17:01: Programming Techniques I am no expert but I have an idea that is worth a try. Handle the dragging your self, but tell trackcontrol you did not, hopefully(I am not sure) it will check to see if the mouse is already up when i does the standard dragging and therefor do nothing, but return a click(hum... it might return no click). Something worth NOSYing is how the Control manager handle's standard dragging. hope I was helpful, brent. ------------------------------ From: DANAMAC Subject: RE: Need help with CDEF (Re: Msg 2051) Date: 10-SEP 01:38 Programming Techniques An excellent suggestion. When I do the dragging, but tell the Control Manager that I didn't, TrackControl does return a hit (hooray!) and standard dragging doesn't really happen because, as you point out, the mouse is already up by then. This I am using as a work around but still trying to figure out how it's really supposed to work. Thanks for the suggestion! I have been doing commenting (aci) while NOSYing this area of the Control Manager and will check for your message in the NOSY forum. - Dana ------------------------------ From: BUGEYE Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22249) Date: 10-SEP 20:48 SIG Business I too have been unpleasantly surprised by the SE fan noise. After going thru the relevant Forum messages, I see Apple has a real problem. Have any of you also had the problem noted in the Oct. MacUser of the SE screen bending on the side. It occurs when you select a group of rows in Excel and the black selection area seems to draw in the sides of the screen. I'm beginning to think a Plus with hard drive attached is a better option than the problematic SE. ------------------------------ From: PEABO Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22292) Date: 11-SEP 00:43 SIG Business I've noticed at all three of my replacement power supplies (on two Mac 512K machines and a Mac Plus) show increased screen warping when large areas of the screen are selected. I don't know if all new Macs tend to have this kind of problem beacuse of some design change or what, but on the other hand, the original very "robust" power supplies are dead, dead, dead. The SE supposedly has an additional complication which can result in a slightly non-rectangular screen. That at least may be fixable by a knowledgeable techie. peter ------------------------------ From: RABBIT Subject: Mac Assembler Date: 12-SEP 13:50 Tools for Developers I have need of an assembler that exists for the Mac/Amiga and ST. I would like to write code on the mac with conditional testing for assembly of specific mac/amiga/st code segments. I would like to be able to do the final assembly and debugging on the native machine, but so far have not found an assembler that uses the same source code format on all three machines. If anyone knows of one I would appreciate the information. Scott ------------------------------ From: MICMAC Subject: RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (Re: Msg 22194) Date: 12-SEP 07:16 Hardware & Peripherals It works OK! Thanks! But It happens that HyperCard don't work with Tops. Have any other Tops users that problem? ------------------------------ From: DEWI Subject: RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (Re: Msg 22321) Date: 12-SEP 23:12 Hardware & Peripherals Hypercard works with TOPS on a 1MB Plus, though you may need to bump the size of the system heap up some. When I first tried it, I got a spectacular crash with sound effects. Some probing with TMON and Nosy showed me that Hypercard requests a chunk of memory from the system heap (in routine INITSOUN if anyone from Apple's listening!) and doesn't check for failure. Fedit can be used to do the necessary surgery to the boot blocks to increase the size of the system heap - just increase it in smallish increments until things work. I had thought that the heap increased dynamically with Sys 4.1 - maybe I should re-read that Tech Note... One final warning - never haul out a DA when you're in the paint tools - your Mac will most likely crash again. Choose the browse tool first. Best of luck, Dewi. ------------------------------ From: ROWLAND Subject: long ADT cords ? Date: 12-SEP 19:05 Hardware & Peripherals What's the longest Apple Desktop Cord length thats a) recommended and b) possible ? I've got a loft in my condo and if I could manage 25 feet I could have a second "station" up there. Anyone know or tried ? Mike ------------------------------ From: JIMH Subject: print Date: 12-SEP 19:30 Programming I need to print out a multipage graphic which is stored in memory as data rather than a bit map. now the problem is that all the example i can find of printing work with single printed page graphics. I dont have enough memory to build a bitmap image of the entire graphic in memory all at once. I can print a single page though. one algorithm would seem to be: Set up a grafport one printerpage in size Repeat draw the entire graphic which is clipped to the page bounds print the page setorigin to next page set clip rect to next page until last page printed Is this reasonable? It would seem to do the job, however it lacks elegance, what with printing the entire graphic over and over. Is there something simple i am missing? jim ------------------------------ From: PEABO Subject: RE: print (Re: Msg 22330) Date: 12-SEP 20:46 Programming If you're just doing this for yourself, it sounds OK. If you are doing it for a realistic application [:-)] then you need to clip it much more finely than single pages. Don't produce bitmaps more than 3K or so in size in a QD PICT. (Non LW printing makes PICTs.) (op cit my comment in DevSIG last week) Take a look at the note on IM I-190 under DrawPicture. peter ------------------------------ From: JIMH Subject: RE: print (Re: Msg 22333) Date: 12-SEP 22:37 Programming Peter, i was not going to draw any pictures. i construct the image from the data. why do i need to clip it more finely than thto the page? thanks jim ------------------------------ From: BRECHER Subject: Re: Re:PYRO screen blanker Date: 13-SEP 16:46 MUGS Online >To: harrow@exodus.dec.com (Jeff Harrow, NCSE BXB1-2/E02 DTN=293-5128) >Subject: Re:Re:PYRO screen blanker Thanks for your appreciation of Pyro! As to your laments... There is a value in the Pcfg resource in Pyro! that you can adjust to attempt to avoid Pyro!'s triggering during Excel calculations. The second longword in Pcfg is a threshold interval, in 60hz ticks, between calls to GetNextEvent. There is a TMPL resource in PyroEdit that you can copy into ResEdit if you prefer not to edit in raw hex; the field is the second one in the TMPL. If this threshold is exceeded, Pyro! considers the application to be busy. You could try reducing the value by 1. If you reduce it too much, you risk having Pyro! not trigger even though the application is idle. (The value is not always used literally; it may be adjusted internally by Pyro! depending on the CPU speed of your Mac.) The next release of Pyro! will be compatible with MultiFinder -- the current version doesn't know about MultiFinder, and will not trigger under MultiFinder while MultiFinder-friendly applications are active (e.g., Finder, PowerStation). Your suggestion for making monitoring of modem port input optional is a good one. As long as we're at it, we should do the same with respect to the printer port, since some people have modems on that port. ------------------------------ From: BRECHER Subject: Suitcase and Finder 5.5 Date: 13-SEP 16:46 MUGS Online >To: chow@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) >Subject: Suitcase and Finder 5.5 > Recently, however, I added the 32nd (or was it the 31st) DA to my "DAs" > file and I've noticed something strange: The Finder now thinks I'm > running off some sort of network. For example, the File menu now has > "Get Privileges" in it. Does anyone know whats going on? Finder is rather undiscriminating in deciding whether AppleShare is present. It calls GetResource('DRVR', 41); if the resource is present, it puts "Get Privileges" in the File menu. A suitcase file with 30 or more DAs in it will usually contain a DRVR 41 resource, and lead to the spurious item in the Finder menu. Although disconcerting, this is harmless as the menu item is dimmed unless AppleShare is really in use. ------------------------------ End of Delphi Mac Digest ************************ ------- -------